The face of white privilege

The modest, rural home of a family of black bears was broken into over the weekend by Goldilocks. The bear’s possessions were ransacked and their food eaten before Goldilocks made her escape.

“We’re a poor family” said the father black bear.

Poor but proud. My house is small and the furniture spartan but I’m not ashamed. I’m a sharecropper.  It’s a tough life. I don’t have to tell you that out in the fields I fight for my meals, I get my back into my living. I provide for my family. Most days we just have porridge to eat. Well one day the wife made the porridge as usual but it was a little too hot. So me, the wife and our child decided to take a walk in the woods to let the porridge cool.  I had just finished answering nature’s call, yeah, I guess we do shit in the woods, and we walked back to our cottage.

It was upon entering their cottage that they noticed the intruder.

Our porridge had been eaten!  And a chair broken! Then we saw this white girl sleeping on our bed.  I was surprised and frightened. A white girl in our home? A brother gets lynched for something like that. I woke her up without touching her just to be safe and she jumped out our window. White girl should stay with her people. I thought that was the end of it.

Unfortunately for our sharecropper he was soon visited by police.

This white girl told police that she was kidnapped by me. I was handcuffed in front of my family and frisked. He told me that fraternizing with white girls was frowned upon. It took my wife and child to convince the policeman that we didn’t kidnap her. She broke into our place, ate our food and wrecked our furniture. Anyway the cop took my story and released me and promised a full and fair investigation. Yeah we know what that means.

Police visited Goldilocks at her family’s estate, talked to her for over an hour and decided not to press charges.

“We interviewed the woman in question and found her story credible” said a detective.

She told us she was out for a walk and got lost. Feeling hungry and tired she saw a sharecropper’s house and entered. She saw three bowls of porridge, not too hot, not too cold, and being hungry proceeded to eat it. Yes, she did break a chair and yes she was sleeping on their bed when the family came back. But they shouldn’t be leaving food behind. Goldilocks was hungry and tired so she did what any young woman would do. She saw food and ate it. The father black bear is just lucky we didn’t beat him up to teach him a lesson.

When informed that Goldilocks would not be charged the father black bear sighed and shook his head.

“I guess I shouldn’t expect justice from the system” said the father.

(298)